We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Eric Pfeiffer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Eric, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

Scaling Up by Multiplying Myself

For many years I was an independent coach. Being that I was exchanging time for money, I was limited in how many clients I could take on at any given time. Spending most of my time in coaching sessions, I was also unable to devote much time to content. In our line of work, selling online content is one of the key ways to create passive income.

In order to increase income I knew something had to change. But I felt stuck. If I gave more time to content creation and the marketing required to sell the content, I would have to give less time to coaching which was my only form of income. I felt caught “between a rock and a hard place.”

MULTIPLYING MY TALENT

I decided I had to take BIG RISK. My first act of scaling up was to bring on an apprentice, who I hoped would help me double our coaching income and create margin for content creation. It worked! Within a couple of years (yes, it takes time to effectively multiply what you can do), we had tripled our coaching income and I wrote our first book!

This apprentice-turned-master coach is now multiplying our coaching team and our reach!

MULTIPLYING MY ABILITIES

Now I had a new problem! I didn’t have the time to market the book or the skills or time to create more online content. What good is content unless we can put it in the hands of those that need it?

I took another BIG RISK. I went looking for a team that could help me develop our online footprint through social media, email campaigns, online courses, etc. I needed help creating, producing and monetizing our content. I tried three different groups (all of which promised the world) and all three were disappointing. I refused to give up. I knew I had to multiply my abilities to grow our business.

Thankfully, I stumbled upon a great digital team who met my core criteria: Hungry, Humble, Hard-working and Honest. They helped me develop our first online course, brilliant social media engagement, effective email campaigns and an online platform to market it all.

MULTIPLYING OUR SCOPE

As a business owner it can be tempting to hoard your success and shield your work from others who may compete. A mentor once urged me to remember there is always enough opportunity for everyone. I took another BIG RISK and invited three other leaders/coaches to collaborate with me to provide my clients services I could not. Would they steal clients, show me up, dilute my growth? Like I said, it’s a BIG RISK, but well worth it as we’ve been able to acquire larger clients with more complex needs. Again, this translates into increased income!

The principles above are a tried and true pathway to scale our personnel and business capacity. Since implementing these strategies we have 5X our income and multiplied our capacity and productivity significantly.

Eric, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started MPWR Coaching after having worked for multiple coaching businesses. I had learned so much from previous mentors, but knew I needed to build a coaching business that addressed what I believe is the core issue facing all leaders and undermining the health and success of most businesses…

A LACK of EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is our ability to lead ourselves which translates into how we lead others. In other words, we can only lead others to the degree we can lead ourselves. Most of us lead well when things are going well, but we discover our true EQ when we’re under pressure.

We all get triggered. Triggers are those experiences that impact us mentally, emotionally and even physically. All it takes is a large trigger or enough little ones piling up to set us on tilt and we find ourselves hijacked! This is when the worst version of us jumps into the driver’s seat and we find ourselves saying or doing things we may later regret.

EQ is the skill set we all need to grow in that enables us to recognize when we’re triggered or hijacked and to recover our sobriety so that we can lead from clarity and composure rather than frustration, fear or hostility.

At MPWR Coaching, we train leaders, teams and organizations with simple tools that give everyone shared language and behaviors to operate well under pressure. We are a high-tech and high-touch coaching organization. We walk with our clients, providing custom coaching pathways to empower them to operate well when we’re no longer around.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

EMPATHY & AUTHORITY

We’ve all heard the saying, “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Every business transaction, no matter what kind, is an opportunity to care for and serve other human beings. In the hustle and bustle of growing a business, it’s easy to forget that clients and consumers buy from those they believe are out for their best interest, not necessarily the best product or most skilled persons.

The Hero’s Journey is a narratology that explains the basic components of every good story. There is a hero who has to overcome challenges to achieve their vision. Along the way they meet a guide, who equips the hero with something that gives them courage, ability and belief in themselves to overcome and succeed.

Our job as businesses is to posture ourselves as the guides to our customers. We must provide empathy, understanding and appreciation for the plight of our customer. They need to know we care about them before they will care about what we’re selling. This is the process of building trust. People by from those they trust.

When our customer trusts our motive, then we can demonstrate authority by offering them the service, technology or product we believe will help them solve their problem.

Our coaching business has put a premium on first earning the trust of our clients before we pretend we can solve their problem. We tell our clients we are more interested in helping them solve their problem than putting money in our pockets.

Our reputation with our clients, current and past, is that we’re on their team.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

WORD OF MOUTH

Our coaching business has grown primarily by word of mouth. I still believe word of mouth is the most powerful and effective growth strategy for increasing clientele. Happy clients are amazing brand ambassadors so we practice a variety of strategies to empower our clients to spread the word. The more enchanting we can be, the more they want to tell others about us!

Free Content – We share as much free and empowering content as we can that serves the leadership needs of our clients. This includes social media, email campaigns, articles and other resources.

Free Phone Calls – We also offer countless hours of free coaching in 10-2o min segments to help leaders process particular challenges.

Once a Client, Always a Client – We make every effort to stay in touch with previous clients to provide continued encouragement and help.

References & Referrals – We love to refer our clients to one another when we believe they can help each other. If we can give them business that’s even better!

First Look – We often send current and past clients rough drafts of our content to offer them a sneak peak and we encourage their feedback.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.mpwrcoaching.com
• Instagram: Mpwrcoaching
• Linkedin: MPWR Coaching
• Youtube: MPWR Coaching